Indian impunity

India’s brazenness knows no bounds, the state continuing its impunity by targeting people beyond its borders. On Thursday, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary (FS) Syrus Sajjad Qazi added some startling revelations to this fact when he said that Pakistan had “credible evidence” proving that Indian agents were involved in killing two Pakistanis in Islamabad, showing how New Delhi’s “brazen” cross-border terrorist activities continue to date. Pakistan says that these are “killings-for-hire cases involving a sophisticated international setup spread over multiple jurisdictions”. According to Pakistan, on October 11 last year, a group of criminals assassinated Shahid Latif outside a mosque in the city of Sialkot. A detailed investigation revealed that an Indian agent, Yogesh Kumar, based in a third country orchestrated the assassination through criminals and terrorists. Another Indian agent was involved in the killing of Pakistani national Muhammad Riaz, who was assassinated in a mosque in Rawalakot in September last year. Pakistan had reached out to the governments of the relevant third countries in this regard.

Pakistan has rightly pointed out that India’s reckless and irresponsible act calls into question its reliability as a credible international player and its claims for enhanced global responsibilities. These revelations coming officially from the Foreign Office call for an international probe into the way the Indian state is behaving like an international terrorist. Last year in November, US authorities said that an Indian government official directed a failed plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist on US soil. This came in the wake of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s explosive revelations in parliament last September where he said that Canadian security agencies had been actively pursuing “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India” and the murder of Sikh leader and activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a strong supporter of the Khalistan Movement and was declared a terrorist by India. However, his death and two other deaths of prominent Sikh leaders – Avtar Singh Khanda in the UK and Pramajit Singh Panjwar in Lahore – pointed to a sinister trend regarding India’s violent activities on foreign soil. The foiled assassination attempt in the US further proved that India was actively involved in such nefarious activities and didn’t care about the international fallout if these plots were uncovered. Pakistan has been raising the issue of India’s terrorist activities on foreign soil for decades now but it was only after India successfully murdered a Sikh on Canadian soil that Western countries realized what India is capable of and how far it can go. After Nijjar’s killing and India’s involvement were made public by the Canadian government, Pakistan’s Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson rightly said that the news of New Delhi’s “network of extra-territorial killings had now gone global”.

Pakistan must not stay quiet about India’s terrorism on foreign soil, especially Pakistan’s. India under Modi has gone a step further and is carrying out these activities with impunity in Western countries as well. India for the longest time thought it could build a case against Pakistan and get away with its own terrorism because it was a global market and the West also looked at it as an anti-China ally in the region. Now that India itself has exposed itself as an unreliable ally, which can go so far as killing people on its allies’ soil as well, the world must not look away.